


Smeared Lipstick and Runny Mascara

by orphan_account



Series: And There Were Flowers [1]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Angst, Anxiety Attacks, Bad Parenting, Bipolar Disorder, Bullying, Child Abuse, Cutting, Depression, Domestic Violence, Drunkenness, Eating Disorders, F/F, Fear of Rejection, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Major Depressive Disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Schizophrenia, Shame, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Violence, detailed suicide attempt, general anxiety, mentioned South Italy, psychiatric care, selective mutism, triggering, very seriously implied sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-25 07:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12526244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Marianne Bonnefoy knows how to live a lie created for her by others. She has no idea who she is or why she's in this world, but she's given a second chance to heal.





	1. Breathe Me

**Author's Note:**

> READ THE TAGS THEY ARE THE ONLY WARNINGS YOU GET.  
> The first chapter will go into detail about the serious effects of trying to OD and it will only get worse from here. I'm hoping to make this a process of slow growth, though.

The first articles of clothing were designed for hiding. Hiding nudity, shame, and sin. It was entirely logical, then, that clothes became so very good at hiding everything and anything.

They could be masks. Fancy skirts and sky-high heels could make any broken girl look like a confident adult. Clothes could earn you a title; a title that would rob you of your name and your identity. No, it  _ replaced  _ those things. It altered you until you fit the title perfectly. Just like you should.

Skank, slut, whore, bitch, liar, garbage, easy, princess, wannabe, emo, loser, pig, waste-of space, etc. The title could be the cuffs that chained you to Hell or the only hope left for you in the world. Clothes were powerful tools.

Some didn’t know how to use them. Marianne knew. She had always known. She learned from her mother, her perfect, dream-like mother. 

Mrs. Bonnefoy’s hair was always done up with flawless curls and lovely pins. Her skirts were  _ never _ wrinkled and her blouses expensive and immaculately-kept. She always knew the best accessories to wear with which to which event. Her shoes were always the back-breaking, murder weapon, badass bitch kind. 

It was a shame she didn’t know how to be a mother like she knew how to use her arsenal of clothes. See, masks were just that: masks. Marianne’s mother hid her true self from everyone except her family. She was almost always drunk at home. Marianne never minded

She was the kind of woman that got sloshed and promptly fell asleep. Marianne actually liked helping her out when she was like that. She’d slide off the footwear, unbutton the blouse so her mom wouldn’t vomit on it. She’d fetch a bin and roll her mother on her side. If her mother was coherent enough to move, she would tie her hair back and keep a cool washcloth on her forehead. 

Marianne was never thanked for it, but she still didn’t mind. What did bother her was how Madeline was treated. A little toddler too small to defend herself so Marianne took care of her little sister, shielding her from the fury of their mother’s hand. The little angel didn’t need to know that Mrs. Bonnefoy blamed her for their father leaving.

And she still mirrored the woman. At least, a little. She learned how to hide her true feelings and her real self in her clothing. She learned how to wear her hair and wear tights that made her legs look thinner. She learned how to slather her face in paint in a way that was beautiful rather than gruesomely similar to Halloween costumes, the way most girls in her grade did.

She looked more mature than her age of seventeen. 

But her clothes hid things, just like her mother’s did. They hid her shame and lack of self-confidence. They hid her weakness. 

She had a title, just like everyone else. Hers was Birdbrained Heartbreaker. It could be worse and she knew it, but she could never look at birds the same. Whenever she heard it, she still cringed. It was her identity and she conformed to it like everyone else. 

Her grades were trashy, always had been. She was smart but… stress didn’t care what was in a person’s brain. It didn’t matter that she was taking a test, it would siphon all the information away to make room for her self-doubts. 

Her anxiety only worsened as she got older, her mother got more drunk, and her sister suffered more. She wished her mother would focus the attention on Marianne. Marianne deserved it. Marianne deserved every cruel word.

She lived up to the heartbreaker portion of her title so much, it was bordering on becoming slut. She screwed anyone that complimented her, desperate for affection any affection at all. In the morning, she would flee, terrified of any commitment to someone that could ruin her and ashamed of what she had done. None of it gave her any pleasure and she never stopped anyways. 

She would wrap herself around girls, boys, and another identifiable spectrum that wanted her. She called herself pansexual, but she was pretty sure she just meant lonely. Not to discredit those who were actually pansexual. 

It was one night. One night that broke her.

She had been with a girl, a pretty girl. A popular girl that would normally not be seen with slutty, Birdbrained Heartbreaker was peeling her clothes off. She found Marianne’s scars. She saw her thick thighs. She saw beyond Marianne’s mask and assigned name. She Marianne as she was and she didn’t like what she saw. She sneered in disgust at her, pushing a fragile person away from her with as many slurs as she could spit out of her mouth.

That girl stormed away and left Marianne shattering into a million pieces.

Marianne broke the bathroom mirror and started slicing her wrists as deep as she could. It wasn’t enough. She went through anything and everything until she found as many pills as she could. She filled a glass of water and gulped them down with her salty tears. 

She lay down, waiting for peace away from this world, no longer thinking about Maddie, who needed her. She was selfish and it didn’t matter because she was dying right now. 

Then the effects of ODing hit her like a train. Her head tried to split itself open and her heart was jackrabbiting itself out her chest like it was trying to win a track record. Nausea floored her and she stopped being able to feel anything but intense, blinding pain. She was going to be sick, she could feel the burn of it in her throat, a cold sick feeling. It was vaguely powdery, like partially dissolved pills. The problem was she couldn’t move. 

She managed to drag herself from the bed to her own bin. She hacked violently into it for a few moments before she lost any sense of where she was. Cold water hit her face and she thought maybe someone was trying to talk to her but she couldn’t hear anything over the sound of her own pounding heart. Maybe this was what a heart attack was like.

It was the worst feeling in the entire world. She was more out of control than she had ever been and she could not escape it. She thought she would black out, but she didn’t. Or perhaps she did because when she finally came to, she was nowhere near where she had last been. She wasn’t even at home. 

She was in a white room with a tiny TV in the juncture between wall and ceiling directly in front of her. There was a slow beeping beginning to make itself known in her aching head. There were flowers on some kind of large rolling object. Her whole body hurt. She felt like she had been hit by a truck and moving did not seem like a nearby possibility. It wasn’t until she tried to talk, to call for help or something, and failed that she realized where she was.

She was in the hospital and she had almost died. She had no idea how long she had been out or where her family was or who found her. She only knew she was  _ alive _ , at least for now and there were flowers. 


	2. I'm Gonna Show You Crazy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> just a filler chapter  
> Lily- Liechtenstein  
> Marianne- France  
> Felice-Italy  
> Carmen- Spain

They did easily four different kinds of blood test and urine tests. Marianne started to lose track. Her mother wasn’t there. The doctor told her they would screen her and she would be sent to acute care for further treatment. Everyone was very serious and stern with her. 

She didn’t really understand what acute care was. She also didn’t entirely get what screening meant. She kept getting that cartoon-y image of a person getting pushed through things like window screens and sliced to itty bitty pieces. This was likely from how much  _ Tom and Jerry  _ she had been watching. It was pretty much the only thing on TV. She couldn’t watch the cooking show. The doctors caught her watching it once and banned her from it. 

They thought she had an eating disorder or something. Which was stupid because she was overweight and she knew it. And she was overweight because she ate so much. She didn’t care. Who gave a fuck how much she weighed when she was already a shitty awful person and was going to die soon anyway? The people she slept with thought the weight complimented her curves at any rate. The doctors saw her weight and her depression and jumped to conclusions. She hated them and their stupid rules. 

There was one really sweet nurse. She was the happiest person Marianne had ever met. She let Marianne call her Felice instead of by her surname. She explained to her that she actually would not be screened, but assessed. The difference, Felice said, was that the doctors already suspected that she was suicidal due to the pretty revealing suicide attempt. 

So an assessment. Marianne was not good at tests. 

Felice brought Marianne cakes from the bakery across the street sometimes. She had to watch Marianne eat it, though. Felice was not entirely convinced Marianne wasn’t bulimic. The cakes were worth it anyways. 

Then came the assessment day. 

She did very well on it. All the numbers were very high. The lady who assessed her told her she was struggling with Major Depressive Disorder and PTSD. Nothing registered for an eating disorder and Marianne wanted to throw it in the doctors’ faces. She didn’t. 

After the assessment, they had her mother bring in clothes for Marianne to get dressed in. Her mother did not stop by to see her daughter. She dropped off one outfit and left without a word. Marianne was instructed to get dressed and then Felice volunteered to drive the French girl to her new home. 

It was a large facility. It looked like a stupid getaway resort from the outside. The inside was all white-painted brick walls and linoleum floors. Every door required a a keycard to get through. Felice left her at the check in with a sympathetic glance. 

The receptionist welcomed her to the Gakuen Youth Center for Girls and asked her to sit down. After about twenty minutes, a young woman came through the doors. She was well dressed with a red, button down jacket and green skinny jeans. Her hair was chin-length and a bow-shaped barrette was clipped into her thick, blonde tresses. She gave Marianne a beaming smile and told her to follow her.

“My name is Lily Zwingili, but everyone calls me Miss Lily here. I’m the group coordinator. I lead the group conversations and make sure you and your roommate don’t have any issues. Would you like to meet your group first or be taken to your room?”

“My room, please.” Marianne said softly. 

“Alright. You will be required to change into the uniform. No personal items are allowed in the rooms. We do, however, allow posters to be hung up with clear tape that you will be provided upon request. Your own clothes you will have to turn in to me once you have changed.” Lily went on, leading her to a hallway of doors. It reminded Marianne of a hotel, almost. 

Lily opened the door with the number 313 engraved into it. There was two metal slots on the door under the number. One was empty, the other had a slip of paper inside that read “Carmen Fernandez-Carriedo” in small print. 

Inside was two twin beds and bookshelves. One half of the room was completely bare. The shelf was dusty and the mattress was lacking any sort of pillow or sheets. The other bed had grey sheets tucked neatly and a comfy-looking pillow. The shelves had perfectly folded navy tops and plaid bottoms. The walls on Carmen’s side of the room had a grand total of three pictures taped up. One was of a red-faced boy and a tall, smiley-faced girl embracing. The other two were of turtles. 

Lily left Marianne alone for three minutes to change. Then she came in and took Marianne normal clothes. 

“These doors do not lock. However, staff are monitoring the halls at all hours. It is strictly prohibited to enter someone else’s room without another staff member. We require respect for all person’s property. Lights off is at nine o’clock sharp. As long as you stick to your schedule, you should have no problem with missing lights off. You will be woken up at six in the morning. Any questions?”

Marianne shook her head so Lily took her to meet the “group.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Each chapter title will be a song title that I think is fitting. If you want to know the artist, feel free to ask.


End file.
